Hey folks, Harry here with an update from Rotterdam, the last from Mr Tough Guy it seems. Seems like Rotterdam had a damn fine year for culty cool films from around the world. Let's take a look at this final selection...
Hey Harry,
Back with another report from the IFFR. Yesterday was the last day, and while I had a great time, after seeing 40+ movies in the last 11 days, I’m just glad I finally had the time to get a decent night of sleep last night. Now I just need to catch up on any movie news I missed over the last few days, just saw the oscar noms and was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of festval favourites.
Anyway on to the good stuff, here’s my 2 cents on a couple of the things I saw since Monday.
Young Gods
Young Gods (Hymypoika) had its international premiere at the IFFR and played as part of the Tiger awards competition. This movie from Finland is about a group of kids that have just graduated from highschool. It al starts when of them a boy named Taavin turns 18, his parents died when he was a kid and now that he’s 18 he finally inherits his parents house and wealth. The first thing he does with it is throw a party. At the end of the party he secretly films one of his friends having sex, and when he and his friends watch the footage he shot the previous night, they make a pact to film all their sexual acts from now on. From that point on they all try to make a sex tape, and from there it’s all downhill, as trying to make a sex tape gets them in trouble, ultimately ending in the dead of one of them.
Young gods is nice movie, and is funny, provocative and tragic at times, and shows the dangers of messing with the emotions and intimacies of others.
Dead End Run
Ishii Shogo whose Electric Dragon 80,000 V, and Gojoe played at the IFFR in earlier years returned this year with Dead End Run. Dead End Run has a lot in common with Electric Dragon 80,000 V, like Electric Dragon 80,000 V it’s pretty short with a running time of only 60 minutes, and also like Electric Dragon 80,000 V it features a loud guitar soundtrack. Even electric dragon’s lead actor Tadanobu Asano returns.
Dead End Run is made up out of 3 shorter stories, each linked by a common theme, they all feature someone on the run, who finally hits a “dead end”. In the first story we meet a guy who is running from somebody, he finally hides around a corner, and grabs an iron bar ready to attack his pursuer. but when he hits his pursuer he finds out that the person lying on the ground apparently dead is just a girl. But things turn weird as the girls starts to move when he tries to walk away, and finally the girl gets up only to start to sing and dance. The second short features another guy running away from someone, but as he finally meets his pursuer in an alley he finds out he’s being chased by himself, or possibly a twin or clone. In the third short we see Tadanobu Asano trying to run away from the police, he ends up on a roof and takes a girl hostage who was on the roof to try to commit suicide.
Dead end run is rather experimental, and is more a collection of ideas, visuals, and loud music rather then a real movie, and won’t appeal to everybody, though if you liked Electric dragon 80,000 V there’s a good chance you’ll like this
Zebraman
Festival favourite Miike takashi was back this year with 2 new movies and a cameo in last life of the universe. I saw Gozu last Saturday after seeing Hero, and while I definitely liked the movie, I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I would have if I had seen it at another time. Going into Gozu my mind was still very much on Hero, and when it started I had a hard time enjoying it was obvious that Hero was the best thing I would see that day. Only close to the end I finally got into it as the scenes became funnier and more disturbing, but ultimately it didn’t really do it for me, though I’d love to see it again under different circumstances. Later that week I saw the second Miike Zebraman, while I had another heavy day seeing both Elephant and Osama that morning, I saw Lost in Translation just before it and after bill murray’s brilliant performance I was ready for anything miike could trow at me. And I wasn’t disappointed.
Zebraman is pretty much like your clasic superhero movie but with a miike twist. The story set in 2010 starts with Ichikawa, a schoolteacher who’s a real loser, neither his family nor his students respect him, his wife is having an affair, his daughter is a prostitute, and his son is bullied at school because of his loser dad. The only escape he has from this all is Zebraman, a tv show that aired shortly on the 70’s but was cancelled after only 7 episodes because it was so bad, but unlike others he has fond memories of it and has even made a zebraman costume. But things seem to look better when a new student joins his class, a boy in a wheelchair who also turns out to be a zebraman fan. As strange things start to happen in his town, like the sightings of a crabman who kills his victims using two large scissors, Ichikawa finds out that he really posses the powers of Zebraman and starts using them to fight the weird aliens that pop up in his town.
I had a great time watching Zebraman, and think it’s truly one of the best superhero movies of recent years, while it can’t compare to movies like spider-man or X-men in special effects and production value, it makes up with a healthy dose of silliness, and over the top cheesy characters. With some fightscenes that look like they belong in a mighty morphing powerrangers movie, Zebraman deals with his enemies, with moves like the Zebraman screwpunch and the zebraman backkick. Even his theme song is so cheesy it’s cool. And things become even sillier when Zebranurse makes an appearance.
Zebraman is one of the most original superhero movies, of recent years even if a lot of things have been stolen or borrowed from other movies, everything feels completely original
Haute Tension
Haute Tension is believe it or not a French Horror movie. The movie starts with a dream sequence in which we see the main character Marie running from someone, but she wakes up before we really learn anything, The movie continues as your average Slasher flick, Marie has been invited by Alex to spend some time at Alex’ parents house. They arrive there pretty late and after some quick introductions they get ready for bed. But the horror starts as a strange and creepy man arrives at the house and starts killing Alex’ family, and kidnaps Alex. Marie hides from him and manages to follow the man undetected, and tries to rescue her friend from the mad killer. But what turns out as your average Slasher flick suddenly gets an unexpected twist as you start to wonder who the madman is and what his motives are for killing.
The movie is entertaining from start to end, but where most horror slasher flicks are just an excuse for Blood and Gore this movie is a bit more intelligent, and you quickly realize this isn’t just another slasherflick. There’s a lot of suspense and some seriously creepy moments enhanced by an excellent soundtrack.
Battle Royale 2: Requiem
I saw it for the second time last Friday, I had seen it for the first time a week earlier at a screening that was introduced by Kenta Fukasaku, but waited with a review till after the second viewing. I’m a big fan of the first Battle Royale movie, and have also read the translated comics that have been released so far. Going in it for the first time, I was dreading it, as all the reviews so far have all been negative, and I expected the worse. Then there was the introduction from Kenta, which was really touching and heart-warming as he explained that he lost his father during the production of this movie and that this movie was dedicated to the memory of his father. When the movie finally started I really wanted the movie to succeed in spite of the negative reviews. Unfortunately the movie doesn’t deliver, while it’s not as bad as I dreaded, it’s still very much flawed.
The movie picks things up three years after the events of the first movie. After surviving the Battle Royale survivor Nanahara Shuya has become a terrorist and leads the Terrorist organisation the Wild seven. Last year at Christmas the wild seven destroyed several buildings in a terrorist attack that killed thousands of people, in a responds to this, the government was passed a new law the BR2 act. The BR program is changed and adapted for the War on terrorism. After a short introduction that explains all this we meet the new class that will be the first to play the new BR2. Again 42 students 21 girls and 21 boys are picked to play in the BR, this time however in stead of a winner takes all free for all, they will need to work together and kill terrorist leader Nanahara shuya. Their teacher Riki explains the rules in a manner reminiscent of the first movie, one boy refuses to play only to be killed by some soldiers, at that time we also learn about the new and improved neck-bands. The neck-bands are still as deadly as in the first movie, but now there is an added danger, as two persons one boy and one girl are partnered, if your partner dies, your neck-band automatically explodes.
After these two deaths it doesn’t take long for the remaining 40 students to get with the program, and they start their mission to kill Nanahara Shuya, who is hiding on an island with the rest of the wild seven. The students first mission is to land on the island, as they go in on rubber boats, they are taken under fire and take heavy casualties, once on the island they make their way to the Wild seven HQ, taking casualties along the way. It isn’t until they near the HQ that the wild seven realize who they are fighting as they notice the neck-bands. Once inside HQ the surviving students are forced to surrender, but when a couple of them continue to fight, there are a couple of casualties, and as several neckbands start to beep ready to explode, the wild seven rescue them by firing an EMP. The remaining students quickly realize they’re fighting on the wrong side and join the terrorist, while the army under pressure from the USA sends in a team to finally get rid of Nanahara Shuya and the Wild seven.
After a final big fight most of the students, and Nanahara Shuya manages to escape and make their way to Afghanistan where Noriko nakagawa the other survivor of the first movie is waiting for them.
It’s a real shame the movie turned out as it does, cause while I’ve heard from many others, that they outright hated it, I think the underlying story is actually pretty decent. It’s just the execution that is lacking. While the first movie is a comment on the youth in japan, the second movie was meant as a comment on America post September 11. And not being a big fan of American actions since bush decided to go to war, I can certainly relate to that. Then there’s the aspect that shows the horror of war, as Kenta explained in the introduction his father, having fought in WW2 wanted to show the horrors of war, and while if you know what he wanted to show you can see that he tried to do that, it doesn’t really come through, because of the over the top campy violent aspect of the movie.
The movie never really gets out of the shadow of the first movie, and the best part of the movie is actually the beginning which is very reminisced of the first one, except they did it better in the first movie. The start isn’t that bad it’s just been there done that, give me something new. Except when new ideas are introduced, they don’t really work, the second half of the movie is dragged out, and at both times I saw it there was a huge applause at the end, not cause it was a good movie, but because the audience was glad that the movie was finally over.
Another thing are the characters, while the first movie had likable characters where you felt for, the main new characters of this movie are unsympathetic, and pretty much scream through out the movie, so you never care for them. The returning characters aren’t much better either, while I cared and felt for Nanahara Shuya in the first movie, He’s changed a lot since then, he’s no longer the same happy caring fellow he was in the first movie, now he’s a lonely troubled mind who’s been on the run for to long and seems to be a bit out of touch. Noriko wasn’t really in it that much, I pretty much spend most of the movie wondering what happened to her, and when she finally appears to words the end, she doesn’t do much, she’s just there.
There are still a couple of cool things though, even if they are small things, a funny moment here a cameo there. Sonny Chiba appears in a cameo as Mimura, uncle of Shinji Mimura the hacker guy in the first movie, Takeshi Kitano is back for a small flashback scene with his daughter played by Ai Maeda real live sister of Aki Maeda (who plays Noriko) and it was nice to finally connect a face to the voice (her voice appeared in both in the first battle royale movie as well as Kill Bill). It was also cool to see that creepy smiling girl that was the winner at the start of the first battle royale back.
All in all it honestly was a pretty bad movie, though I think I’m still in denial, I want to like it but honestly there’s not much good, though the beginning was better the second time around, the last half was just too tedious and dragged out and I had trouble not falling asleep the second time around (maybe also partly cause it was the 6th movie I saw that day) and was glad when the movie was finally over. I still want to buy it on DVD though if I can find it and it’s not too expensive. But if it ever gets theatrical release, I’m staying away from that, twice has been more then enough, maybe even too much, at least on DVD you can skip some of the boring parts.
That’s all from me for this year, I had a blast these last 11 days, saw 42 different movies, didn’t have much sleep all week but it was worth it, and I’m already looking forward to next year.
Mr Tough Guy
